North Shore City, New Zealand in Google Earth

July 2, 2009

In response to yesterday’s post on 3D terrain a GEB reader in New Zealand, Paul van Dinther, forwarded me an article in a local paper which describes how North Shore City shared high resolution imagery and 3D terrain data with Google for Google Earth. The data was released back in April, and is quite impressive. I spent some time this morning flying around this nice looking suburb area north of Auckland. The aerial imagery is clear and sharp at about 6cm resolution, and the terrain is very well done. You can see shoreline cliffs, roads, and even footpaths in the sides of hills in the terrain.
I’ve made a brief GE 5 tour of the North Shore City area showing some of the high resolution aerial imagery, 3D terrain, the navy base, and views of Auckland. Here’s a screenshot from North Head (a park on a hill) with an impressive view of Auckland and Mount Victoria on the right:

Many cities around the world have started promoting themselves by giving more accurate imagery, terrain, 3D models and other data to Google for use in their mapping tools. This is an excellent example of how Google Earth is getting better in a way that is mutually beneficial to users of Google Earth, and providing economic benefit to those living there.

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was released. He worked in 3D graphics for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank left in 2009 to circumnavigate the earth by sailboat as part of the Tahina Expedition.

See all those streaks on Mt Vic? That’s from people surfing down the grass slopes on sheets of cardboard
I wish more councils would put the publicly funded data out into the public like this. It made house hunting on the north shore so much easier. Now it takes no time at all to check an estate agent’s claim about a “full site”, which more often than not turned out to be “full site shared between two houses”.

I know my comment is totally unrelated to the article but I am a Trinbagonian (I’m from Trinidad and Tobago) and I don’t know how to get to send some information to the Google Earth’s community. I think Google Earth is a cool thing and the constant updating of the versions Google earth is cool. I have the latest version of Google Earth and by Trinidad there is not an icon or a little history note about our Island’s Pitch Lake. I think that a little description of the Pitch Lake should be included as it’s regarded as one of the “7 wonders of the world.” Please it would be great if someone from Google Earth could contact me through e-mail since I have researched information and pictures (lol I guess u would not need the pics huh ) about the Pitch Lake. Once again Google Earth is a great thing keep up the work and contact me and tell me what is going on with the matter. kk

This is so cool, and the technology is still taking baby steps really. The future prospects are mind-blowing to me. It would be great if GE could partner uip with a Flight Simulator software creator and make very real-looking environments.

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